Foodgasms and farmers' markets

You would think that after five years in Chicago, I would have -- at some point -- made my way to the Green City Market. Well, er, oopsies. Better late than never, no?

For those non-Chicagoans, GCM is a farmers' market that sells all local, sustainably grown food from farms in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. Everything is delicious and in season. And is like foodgasm central. Also, they sell a lot of kale.

$35 in organic produce later (including, for the curious, at least two varieties of kale and one bag of quickly consumed cheese curds.), I had to stop buying things and start taking pictures of them to at least keep my budget from full-on imploding.

But serious, y'all. Look at this food porn! If you're trapped in the city, this is just about heaven.









The last two shots were taken in my living room while I was cooking up a great sweet corn side dish. If you play nice, I'll pass along the recipe.

Over and out. I gotta go eat.

It is hot.

So naturally, this was my dinner last night.


Totally reasonable on Chicago's first 100-degree day in six years, right? RIGHT!?

So much to say. So much to say.

"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain

Yes. I started a post with a quote. I'm that uncreative girl. Sue me.

Surliness aside, I thought I'd pop back to these parts to say hello and dispel any rumors (among the four of you who read this blog) that I've vanished. In fact, here I am! In all my saucy glory, alive and kicking.

Here's a much-abbreviated, much-forgotten summary of the past many months.

_ I started running. Yes. Me. And not like that last time, either. In fact, dare I say, I've become a wanna-be Sporty Spice since last we left this space. I started in February, doing the Couch to 5K program. I was running for 60 seconds at a time my first week, with the goal of doing a 5K by my 30th birthday in May. Somehow, some way, the process clicked and for the first time, I actually started to get the hang of it. I rocked the 5K with the help of some fabulous girlfriends who ran alongside me as part of the b-day celebration. (Sadly, I opted to leave a birthday tiara at home.) And after that, I kept going. And this Sunday, I shocked just about everyone (and most especially myself) and ran my first-ever 10K, running every freakin' step of the 6.2 miles. Craziest of all is that I knew after the hard run, I'd need to take a few days off to recover and I'm already antsy to get back out there. Say it with me: WTF.

_ I got to see The Modern Gal get hitched to her super awesome Modern Mister, who is technically known as The Modern Love Machine, but don't you just like Modern Mister better? As one would expect from someone with The Modern Moniker, her wedding was super fun and super chill and all around awesome, despite the crazy Memphis heat and the fact that one of the photographers had to go to the hospital to get stitches the morning of the wedding after getting thwacked in the head while shooting the guys playing disc golf. Unlike other weddings I've been to, where it's obvious people are trying too hard or trying to fit themselves into very specific boxes of what they think The Perfect Wedding should be, The Modern Matrimony (or, Modtrimony as we called it on Twitter) was completely authentic to this couple. It was a lovely, refreshing change.

_ I went to DC to hang out with my peeps. It was our annual reunion. We ate lots of crabs.

_ I turned 30. And celebrated by the aforementioned 5K, which was followed by karaoke. I have yet to have an Oh-My-God-I'm-30 Crisis. I take this as a good sign that this decade is going to kick ass.

_ I've sewed. A lot. And embroidered. And stuff.

_ I spent far too much money on stuff.

_ I read many awesome books.

_ I took a seminary class. And decided I should not, not NOT go to seminary. What was I thinking?

_ Despite all that, I made a new Chicago BFF, who of course is leaving in several short weeks for a new adventure in New Jersey where she's off to ... wait for it ... seminary. Follow her adventures here. And note I'm already lobbying for inclusion as a sermon anecdote sometime in the future.

_ I developed an unhealthy obsession with banana pudding. Please, if you're in Chicago, make me some.

_ Oh, and three days after my last post it snowed buckets and buckets and buckets. Today's 98 degrees.

There you go. You've been caught up on the past five months. Or something.

Feel better? Me, too.

Nesting doll(s)

I can't stop embroidering. Or wanting to make pillows. Luckily, the two seem to go together. (Well, they go together if you're a crafty freak.)

A few weekends ago, I stitched this super-cute Russian nesting doll, using a pattern from Sublime Stitching.

Looks adorable, no?


I started adding sashing when my machine crapped out on me. (Apparently, one cannot sew quilts for two years and not have the insides cleaned. Note to self.) It's since been repaired, but here's the work-in-progress. The fabric on the left will be the backing.

Gorgeous

My current brain worm.



Doesn't this line just give you chills? "And promise not to promise any more." Sigh. Perfect winter song.

Pillowy Pillows

Because I'm me (and by "me," I mean, strange) the highlight of my staycation was finally getting around to some of those lingering projects. (And by "lingering projects" I mean sewing, which is why the burned-out lightbulbs in the impossible-to-remove light fixture are still dark.)

Anywho, this brings me to these pillows that I recovered, using my stash of Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks voile. I used the dobby yellow print as the center and did some simple piecing with two other fabrics around it. Because the voile is so sheer, I added a layer of fabric stabilizer to the back.



I used some Little Folks flannel on the back and, inspired by some sewing I did with The Modern Gal the weekend before, made a simple envelope enclosure on the back.



I did two pillows before my sewing machine crapped out on me (a story for another time), but I love how they turned out. Simple and sweet, and perfect for my living room.

On books and tree rings.

I’ve spent the past few days puttering around my condo during staycation. Staycation during the winter means you don’t really LEAVE the house. (Have I mentioned I love staycation? You can stay in jammies for days, people. DAYS.)

The pragmatic side of me knew I had to use this time to organize, which is how I found myself spending a good solid hour tidying my book shelves. Before you fall over the fact that I spent a full-on 60 minutes playing with books floor-to-ceiling shelves, you need to know that at my core I’m a word nerd who’s never once been without a library card or a list of books to read. (Sidebar of a true story: I was such a delinquent book returner in my youth that in kindergarten my mother gave me a lecture about my overdue books, telling me that one day, if I continued my wayward habits, they’d destroy my credit rating. Take this time to imagine the blank stare a pig-tailed six-year-old gives to someone after this lecture.)

But I digress.

While I was moving shelves, sorting books, dusting and declutterring, I realized that in a way my bookshelves tell the story of my life. From photography to progressive theology, bookshelves are like tree rings that tell a story of a tree and its environment. There’s my entire collection of Paulo Coelho’s works translated in English, which I managed to accumulate after a friend gave me The Alchemist as a college graduation gift. There’s my father’s old photography books, that he gave me to me when I got my hands of my first SLR. There’s some of my favorite children's books, both from when I was kid (hello, Misty of Chincoteague) and some I’ve picked up along the way because I wanted to have them on my shelves. (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.) There’s vintage sewing books, feminist theory, Irish literature and some American poetry anthologies. There’s the Jodi Picoult I love to read on vacation along with books on yoga, journalism, politics, public health and tons of fiction that I just haven’t been able to part with over the years. (I have a rule that book collection cannot expand beyond the confines of the shelves that hold them, so I always prune a few times a year.)

There was a New York Times essay a few years ago that talked about how bookshelves can be used to judge a perspective date. It was snarky and sometimes snotty, but at its core is this pretty important truth that we are what we read. Or, maybe it’s that we read what we are.

I guess for me, the books I hold on to after sending off a pile to Goodwill are the books that sort of mark the stages of my life.

What do you think?

I'm playing with Aimee Ray's Doodle Stitch Along on Flickr. Here's my pretty-basic version of the assignment.

Embroidered Christmas.

I've come a long way since my sock puppet days. (Although, I believe such maturity probably comes along with, you know, being legally able to drive, vote, drink, lose my 401(k) during a particularly bad day in the market...)

Anyway, even though it's after Christmas AND after Epiphany, which means I'm all kinds of late, I thought I'd show off some pictures of some little handmade gifty things I made for the holidays. I forgot to take pictures of some Christmas tea towels I whipped up for my family, but I did snap some pictures of Christmas ornaments I made as hostess gifts.






For the curious, I just downloaded a fun font, then traced it onto the fabric and stitched from there.

Then, since I couldn't stop embroidering, I made this awesome sexy librarian pillow for my badass librarian friend. I used a Sublime Stitching pattern and just did some basic piecing of fabric around the border.






And then, since I STILL couldn't stop embroidering, I made this pillow for me.

Portrait of a young artist

When I went home for Christmas, my mother dug up a little treasure to remind me that I've always been a wee bit crafty. Or, at least, had ambitions about being crafty. Or was simply a deranged child.

Witness: The puppet I "made" one day when I was in kindergarten. You'll note that in this case, "made" means attached-yarn-to-a-sock-with-lots-and-lots-and-lots-of-tape.



Keep in mind, this wasn't a class project. This was me. One day on a weekend. (Apparently sock puppets are what happens when you're an only child in rural Maryland. Except not the kind that lend themselves to puppetting because you forget to create a face that allows for the hand to bend. My puppet could only look shocked and move her head left to right.)


I think the lace trim at the bottom of the sock shows a certain finesse well beyond my years.

I would like to note, however, that the fact that almost 25 years later, the yarn and tape are still firmly attached. Solid craftsmanship, eh?

Craft Porn.

Ok, ok. It's not porn. Hold your horses.

Instead, this is a super-awesome compilation of 100 of the best crafty-type tutorials posted in 2010 from around the interwebs. If you're a reader of the big craft blogs, you'll have already seen some of these, but others were new to me. And, of course, totally drool-worthy.

Big props to The Long Thread, which has been compiling its annual Top 100 list for three years now.

Happy crafting.

Need some help?

Still not sure on what your word of the year should be? Christine Kane just put up a cool "discovery tool" to help you figure it out. It's free to download, here.

In which I stretch.

Stretch. That's it. That's my word for 2011.

I love the literal and figurative idea of stretching. It's about reaching, pushing, and sometimes pushing through. It's about moving beyond where you are and going some place that might not feel too comfortable at first.

I want to stretch beyond who I am, which, admittedly, is someone who sometimes feels like she's prone to staying in a bit of a holding pattern. I want to push myself to try new things and learn more and generally be comfortable in a place where I might be uncomfortable. It's not about radical change, it's just about becoming more limber -- bit by bit.

For the curious: I'll take a big stretchy step in February when I take my first grad school class in spirituality at McCormick Theological Seminary. (Full disclosure: I'm auditing it, so it's not the world's biggest thing, but stretching is about baby steps!) Another one will follow in the coming weeks when I start lending a hand at my local quilt store on Saturdays.

Literally, stretch is also about committing more to yoga. I'm still sweaty from this afternoon's class (where, by the way, I rocked out the wheel pose), and I'm hoping to make it to at least one of two special workshops being held at my studio this week. One is on New Year's Eve and the other is bright and early(ish) New Year's Day. I like the idea of starting 2011 by fully embracing at least one form of the stretch plan.

Meanwhile, as I wrap up The Sparkle Initiative, I've also been thinking about way to commemorate a the year. I think I've settled on this, with a bit of tweaking.

I've been loving reading about your words of the year. (And, of course, all the posts on Christine Kane's blog where people explain what they choose and why.) Keep 'em coming.

Peace out.

Image via: Elizabeth-Mae Swenson

Word of the Year.

Last year, I decided to follow the footsteps of the inestimable Christine Kane and choose a word of the year as a way to set a personal intention for the next 12 months. After some wrangling, I went with "sparkle." (For background on the WOTY, click here. Or, better yet, click on over to her blog and see the other words people have chosen and why.)

Eleven months and 27-ish days later, I think I gave it admirable effort. There were moments of radiance and some definite moments of ... well, not. But like I said here, my goal with sparkle was simple.

"I feel like sparkle just ... fits. Everywhere. It encompasses so many of the areas of my life I'd like to improve. It's a reminder of how to behave. What kind of result I should seek from my actions. How to treat others. And how to be."

Now it's almost 2011 (gasp, wasn't it August like 3 seconds ago?) and I've got to come up with another word. And, of course, so do you. So if you played along last year -- or want to get in on the action, it's not too late to pick a word that defines your intention for the year.

Think about it. Feel free to post your word and your rationale below and on your own blog. And let me know how you did on your word for 2010. When I pick my word, I'll put up a post here. And, like last year, I'm happy to make little photographic presents for you guys to help carry you and your word through the year.

Happy thinking.

Lots of love,
Your Sparkler.

And to all a good night.

I know it's been quite around these parts, but live in my world certainly hasn't. I hope to return to being blogtastic in the new year. Until then, I offer you this lovely video of Jesse the Wonder Dog, decorating a tree. Because, really, there are few things more cute than a terrier, no?



Merry Christmas. May yours be warm, merry and bright.